“Capitalism will always be racist and sexist, because it has to mystify its core contradiction - the promise of prosperity vs the reality of widespread poverty - by denigrating the 'nature' of those it exploits: colonial subjects, women and the dispossessed."
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COVID: Know Thine Enemy——-A Multisystem Disease
Effects of the novel Coronavirus on multiple systems Based on the experience of SARS, COVID was expected by most people to be a respiratory illness. However, it quickly became apparent that, as well as spreading much more readily than the SARS virus, SARS-CoV-2 was producing a much more complicated illness that affected multiple bodily systems.…
COVID: Know Thine Enemy——-Common Features
Patient Categories: People who catch SARS-CoV-2 can be placed into four broad categories: (1) Sub-clinical cases, who are asymptomatic (2) Those with infection in the upper respiratory tract, who have mild fever and a cough, and possibly other milder symptoms like headache or conjunctivitis. (3) Those with more severe fever and cough, as well as…
COVID: Know Thine Enemy—-Molecular Considerations
My Childhood Obsessions: I’ve always been interested in understanding things at a molecular level. I was a nerdy sort of a kid. Even at primary school I was interested in biology and chemistry. Fortunately, all my friends were pretty nerdy too, although I think I was the only one that had a hand-drawn “poster” of…
COVID: Know Thine Enemy—Preamble
Albert Einstein, surely one of the most remarkable humans who ever existed, said “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”. While I would hardly compare my intellect to Einstein’s, I too have always been curious, and keen to learn new things. Retirement has given me the opportunity to do a lot more…
The Mail on Sunday’s Best Shot?
I am not a reader of the Daily Mail or the Mail on Sunday, but Twitter drew my attention to an article in the latter “newspaper” with the headline “Man of the people? New Labour leader Sir Keir owns land worth up to £10m”.
Behind the Mask
In the era of COVID-19 there was never any doubt that frontline medical staff dealing with infected patients needed to wear gowns, gloves, a face mask and some form of eye protection. The argument for the general population wearing face masks has, up till now, been much more contentious. There seems little doubt that the…
Well Here I Am Again!
Well here I am again! A year ago, it came time to renew my WordPress subscription. I hadn’t posted in my blog for a while, but I thought paying the fee might motivate me to start blogging again. As you can see, it didn’t work! When I used to blog many years ago, I didn’t…
Vienna
Today we woke up moored in the Austrian capital. We went on a tour of the city, seeing statues of Mozart, Johann Strauss, and Goethe as well as the Austrian Parliament (surrounded with scaffolding) and the amazing, enormous Vienna town hall. We saw the horses of the Spanish Riding School and the beautiful buildings of the Museum Quarter. We were led through the city on foot to the St Stephen's Cathedral, which, predictably, had more scaffolding!
Melk and Crems
This morning we were moored at Melk in order that we could visit Melk Abbey. For some reason I had it in my mind that Melk Abbey would be a modest affair, but in fact it is huge, and the abbey owns a large amount of the surrounding land. It was gifted to the Benedictine Order by the Emperor Leopold II, having been a fortress originally. There are now only 30 monks there, but it also functions as a school with 900 pupils.
